Nebraska.Code() Conference 2016

Our Co-Founders are headed to Nebraska.Code() conference next week and will be presenting 4 sessions on Friday, May 20th. It’s a great opportunity for our team to share our experiences and give back to the community through speaking and we are pleased to have been selected to speak at Nebraska.Code() again this year.

Humanitarian Toolbox

In addition to speaking, Nebraska.Code() gives us a chance to contribute our skills to help others. The conference will be hosting the Humanitarian Toolbox project with a code-a-thon that will allow attendees to work on developing software tools to help with disaster relief around the globe. We are pleased to be able to contribute our time and skills to this great cause and hope to see many of our fellow speakers and attendees at the Code-A-Thon.

Speaking (Friday, May 20th)

Brent Stewart (@BrentEStewart)

Getting to Market Faster with VSTS

11:45 AM (Breakout B1)

Visual Studio Team Services is Microsoft’s next evolution of Visual Studio Online. Come see what is new and learn how VSTS can make your life better. We will examine the different modules available and look at a sample workflow taking us from project creation through deployment. Along the way we will look at how we can use VSTS to setup our source control, continuous integration, automated testing, continuous deployment and more. VSTS is a powerful tool, come see if it is a good fit for you and your team.

Practical Patterns for the Progressing Programmer

2:15 PM (Breakout A1)

Understanding software design patterns is critical for every developer who strives to be top-tier. Come join us as we explore some of the most common design patterns and discuss how you can leverage them to make your life easier. We will look at some real world code examples and learn to recognize common problems and how to use different design patterns to create elegant solutions. Learn to spot common anti-patterns and the pitfalls they bring. Join us and take the next step in your career.

Duane Newman (@DuaneNewman)

Xamarin Forms: Writing one app to rule all your platforms

9:45 AM (Breakout B1)

Are you seeking the Holy Grail of Write Once Run Anywhere app development? Then Xamarin Forms might be what you are looking for. This session will give you the information you need to understand Xamarin Forms and how it can be used to lower the friction of cross platform mobile development. You will see how easy it is to simultaneously create your app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone using this Open Source toolset.

Branded for Success

1:00 PM (Breakout D)

Everyone has a personal brand! The question is are you in control of yours, or letting others define it for you? What does your brand say about you? Are you a Coca-Cola, Pepsi or RC Cola? Brand isn't just a logo and website, it's your first impression on potential employers, clients, and even your co-workers. Let's take a look at the relevance of a personal brand in today's developer market and what you can do to take control of yours.

Fall Conference Schedule

It's been just a short 2 weeks since the Heartland Developers Conference wrapped up and we are already looking forward to the St Louis Days of .NET in November.

Duane presenting at HDC15

Heartland Developers Conference

This year's Heartland Developers Conference was another great experience for us. Co-Founder Duane Newman presented a well attended session titled "Double Down with DevOps" and had lots of interaction from the audience. He talked about the value of embracing IT into your development process and how approaching IT operations from a developers perspective can impact your daily work life in a positive way. While there were many faces we recognized from past years we enjoyed meeting many new speakers and attendees. Our team is already looking forward to returning next year.

St. Louis Days of .NET

We are now in preparations for our next road trip. We will be heading to the St. Louis Days of .NET conference November 12th - 14th. It will be at the Ameristar Conference Center in St. Charles, MO. The great part about the meeting place is that once you arrive you never have to go outside until the conference is over (this can be a big deal in Missouri in November, last year it snowed). Both Brent and Duane will be presenting sessions this year. Brent will be presenting Level Up with PowerShell and Practical Patterns for the Progressing Programmer and Duane will be presenting Double Down with DevOps. We hope to see you all there.

Here are descriptions of the sessions we’ll be presenting:

Level Up with PowerShell, Brent Stewart

Time is a valuable and precious resource, and it seems there are never enough hours in a day. Come learn how PowerShell can empower you to be a more effective developer. We'll look at how PowerShell can be used to help solve common problems and examine what makes it such a rich and powerful tool. In this session we will look at how PowerShell is built on top of the .NET framework and how you can leverage you existing skills to automate different aspects of your development/deployment processes.

Practical Patterns for the Progressing Programmer, Brent Stewart

Understanding software design patterns is critical for every developer who strives to be top-tier. Come join us as we explore some of the most common design patterns and discuss how you can leverage them to make your life easier. We will look at some real world code examples and learn to recognize common problems and how to use different design patterns to create elegant solutions. Learn to spot common anti-patterns and the pitfalls they bring. Join us and take the next step in your career.

Double Down with DevOps, Duane Newman

Are you ready to ease your deployment pains while at the same time making yourself more marketable? DevOps may be a hot buzzword that will get recruiters on the phone, but it will do more for you than just increasing your resume appeal. Most of us aren't blessed with a crack IT team (if we even have one) to handle operations and we are stuck doing it all. Taking a developers approach to operations by creating repeatable automated tasks will save you time and headaches. We'll take a look at some of the popular tools available to you and go over tips and tricks that I've had to learn the hard way over the years. Would you rather spend an hour watching builds, copying files, and trying to remember all the config values to change only to beat your head against the wall because you didn't stop some service when you started, or just click a button and watch IT Crowd while your code is built, deployed and tested for you? That's what I thought.